


Fondue

by Pargoletta



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aging, Alzheimer's Disease, Christmas, Dementia, Depression, Gen, Hanukkah, Jewish Steve Rogers, Librarians, Memories, Parties, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Questioning Sexuality, Reunions, SHIELD, Sharon Carter Has A Crush, Suicidal Thoughts, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9215696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta
Summary: Sharon Carter was honored to accept the assignment of undercover protection for Captain America.  The job offered prestige, a rent-free apartment, and the flexibility to take care of Aunt Peggy.  Now Sharon finds herself juggling heartbreak, frustration, the withering of two souls in her care, and a host of uncertainties about her relationship with her best friend.





	1. Soon It's Gonna Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to this story! It’s one of the rare ones that came to me from a title first; the story kind of flowed from there. It’s also one of the very common ones that changed enormously between idea and execution. This story is set just before the events of _The Winter Soldier_ , in the fall and winter, just as the year is reaching its longest, darkest night. It’s no accident that so many holidays that fall around that time feature light as a major theme! Enjoy, and I will meet you at the end.

  1. **Soon It’s Gonna Rain**



 

 

“So, what do you think?” Director Fury stood in the doorway of the apartment and watched as Sharon looked around. Sharon set her suitcase down by the door and walked a few steps into the living room. The place was fully furnished and decorated, which would make her life easier, although she probably wouldn’t have chosen quite so much Danish Modern furniture. Fury followed her at a respectful distance as she inspected the view, flipped a few switches to see what they controlled, and peeked into the kitchen. 

“Cute,” she said. “I assume the kitchen --?” 

“Fully stocked and ready to go,” Fury assured her. “You’ll be doing your own shopping, of course, but there are some basics there, and enough to keep you going for a few days.” 

Sharon opened cupboards to find stacks of IKEA dishes, and looked at an array of food in the refrigerator and the small pantry closet. A small hallway led to a bedroom, a bathroom, and a linen closet. 

“We left some space for you to bring a few personal items, of course,” Fury said. “Toiletries, leisure clothes, sheets, that sort of thing. You should be comfortable here.” 

Sharon nodded. “Comfortable, certainly.” She went into the bedroom, sat down on the queen-size bed and decided that it was acceptable. The bedroom had one closet and a small dresser. The closet was empty, but two drawers of the dresser were filled with hospital scrubs. Sharon pulled out one of the boxy pink shirts. “Medical cover?” 

Fury smiled. “You’re a nurse. The Georgetown University Hospital. We’ve got credentials for you, and they’ve set up a program where you can go in and look busy if you need to. What do you think?” 

“It’s great.” Sharon put the shirt away and moved them back into the living room. If they were going to talk business, it didn’t seem right to stay in the bedroom. 

“Glad you like it.” Fury sat down on one of the uncomfortable armchairs. “Figured it would work well for you. It’s nearer to the facility than your old place.” 

She nodded. “I appreciate that. But you’re not moving me into a rent-free furnished apartment this close to Dupont Circle out of the goodness of your heart.” 

Fury shook his head. “We wanted you to get settled in first, give the place some time to get lived in. You’ll have a mission in about six weeks.” 

“Oh?” After it had become clear that Aunt Peggy’s dementia had become too advanced for her to live alone, Sharon had traded field work for a temporary desk job so that she could help to supervise her great-aunt’s care in Sunset Glen, the best nursing home that one could afford on a SHIELD pension. Though she was glad of the chance to keep her job and see Aunt Peggy on Sundays, she had to admit that she missed field work. 

Fury suddenly looked uncomfortable, and it occurred to Sharon that the apartment was probably bugged. “Let’s go to lunch,” he suggested. “You like Italian? You’ve got the key, so you can leave your things.” 

“Okay.” Sharon got up and carried her suitcase into the bedroom. She made sure that the keys that Fury had given her were in her purse before returning to the living room. “Got a place in mind?”

  

 

Later, they sat in a small booth in a lively trattoria, with personal pizzas in front of them. Sharon picked up a slice of her pepperoni, and observed with some amusement that Fury preferred to use a knife and fork on his green pepper and olives. “So what’s the occasion?” she asked, after they had both had a chance to take the edge off of their appetites. 

“I’m putting a new elite team together,” Fury said. “Special Tactical Reserve for International Key Emergencies.” He took a bite of his pizza and waited for Sharon to spell it out in her head. 

“STRIKE,” she said, with a laugh. “Honestly, if only people knew how much of their personal freedom depended on someone making up a catchy acronym.” 

Fury shrugged, which was as close as he would get to acknowledging that particular absurdity. “Anyway, I’m assigning a selection of our best assets to this team. Barton, Rollins, Romanoff, Rumlow –“ 

“One of these things is not like the other ones.” 

“—and Rogers.” 

Sharon paused with her pizza slice halfway to her mouth. A slice of pepperoni slid off, and she caught it and pushed it back onto the slice before it could hit the table. “Rogers?” she asked. “As in, Steve Rogers? Captain America?” 

Fury grinned at her. 

“Wow. I’d heard that we’d found him, and we all saw the news from New York, but . . . wow. And he’s coming here?” 

“Not like he had anywhere better to go,” Fury said. “Wasn’t hard to convince him to keep working for us, to be honest. We can get him up to speed on the modern world. He’ll be one of our best assets.” 

“I’ll bet.” Sharon chewed on a bite of pizza while she contemplated this news. “Wow. So, Captain Rogers is moving to Washington, and . . .” The puzzle pieces began to fall into place. “You’re not making him room with me? In a one-bedroom apartment?” 

Fury shook his head. “No, no. Wouldn’t do that. He’ll be living next door. We got that place fixed up, too. You’re on . . . well, call it protection detail.” 

“Protection detail?” 

“Just be around. Be the friendly neighbor he says hi to in the hall or the laundry room, borrow a cup of sugar or something.”

Sharon frowned. “I think I’m missing something. What does Captain America need protection from?” 

“Himself, mostly.” Fury ate a bite of pizza and took a sip of Coke before explaining. “He’s not adjusting to the modern world very well. We figured that a change of scene would be good for him, so I’m assigning him to lead our STRIKE team. Your job is mostly to make sure that he doesn’t spend all his off-duty time inside his head, see that he eats and sleeps and maybe gets out once in a while. Be friendly and neighborly, but also be on the lookout.” 

Sharon stopped eating and twisted her napkin in her hands as she considered the assignment. It didn’t sound difficult, the apartment was lovely, and she’d still have time to visit Sunset Glen. But thinking of Sunset Glen led to another consideration. “What about Aunt Peggy?” she asked. “She’s nearby. Should I bring him to visit her at some point?” 

“Absolutely not,” Fury said. “I don’t want him even to know that she’s in the same city. He needs to make a clean break from the past.” 

Something about this didn’t sit right with Sharon, but she pushed that feeling aside. Fury tended to listen to reasoned debate from his subordinates, but he had very definite ideas about what constituted “reasoned.” She thought for a moment before she spoke. “I know she’d like to see him.” 

Fury frowned. “With all due respect to a great woman and a founding member of our agency, her brain is basically oatmeal. How can you possibly know what she’d like?” 

“Because she tells me,” Sharon said, a bit stung. “Repeatedly, whenever I go to visit her. Director, I don’t think you understand. Captain Rogers is one of the few things she actually knows and remembers. She doesn’t recognize me, she barely recognizes Eloise, who takes care of her all day, but she always points to that old picture, and she knows who it is. That’s the one thing left that she wants out of life.” 

Fury sat back in his chair and considered Sharon’s words. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe I should find out. Let’s go see her. I’ll get a better idea then.” 

It wasn’t a full endorsement, but it was the best that Sharon was going to get. While Fury signaled for the check, Sharon took out her phone and called Eloise’s personal number. Fortunately, Eloise reported that Aunt Peggy was having a good day, and would be ready for a visit in half an hour.

  

 

Eloise greeted Sharon and Fury with a broad smile when they knocked on Aunt Peggy’s door. “Well, hello, Sharon,” Eloise said. “This is a wonderful treat, having you come to visit us in the middle of the week!” 

“Everyone deserves a treat now and then,” Sharon said. “Eloise, this is Nick Fury.” She glanced at Fury and caught a minute shake of his head. “He works with me, and I thought he might like to meet Aunt Peggy.” 

“Well, isn’t that nice.” Eloise turned and led them into the living room of Aunt Peggy’s little suite. “Peggy, honey, your guests are here!” 

Peggy Carter sat in a high Queen Anne chair, one of the few pieces of furniture that had been brought from her old home when she had moved to Sunset Glen. Her gray hair had been carefully curled and brushed, and it fell about her shoulders over a pretty blue blouse. Eloise had even put her pearl necklace on her for the occasion. Aunt Peggy’s eyes lit up when she saw Sharon, and she smiled, turning her face into a mass of small crinkles. 

“I know you,” she said. “You come after church, and we have tea together.” At that thought, a shadow passed over her face, and she turned to Eloise. “We didn’t go to church today,” she said. “Did we miss church?” 

“No, honey,” Eloise said. “It’s Thursday today. This is a special visit, a treat for you.” 

Aunt Peggy relaxed, and the smile returned to her face. “Oh, I like treats. You brought someone else with you.” She peered at Fury, and then her eyes went wide, and she motioned for Sharon to come closer. Sharon leaned down, and Aunt Peggy whispered to her, loud enough that everyone could hear, “Is he a pirate?” 

Sharon felt a hot blush cover her face, and she didn’t dare look at Fury. Eloise laughed. “No, he’s not a pirate. He’s Sharon’s friend.” 

When Sharon did manage to look up, Fury stood calm and expressionless, waiting to see what she would do. She thought for a moment, then turned to Eloise. “Eloise, would you mind letting us visit in private?” she asked. “I’ll make the tea. Maybe you could take a break for an hour, grab a cup of coffee or something?” 

“Okay. I’ll leave you be. I’ll be just down the hall in the lounge if you need me. Bye, Peggy!” she said, a little louder. “You have fun with your visitors, and I’ll see you later.” 

Once Eloise had left, Sharon went into the tiny kitchenette and put the kettle on, then found three mugs and put teabags in them. One had a picture of a robin swinging from a branch, one was covered in cheerful red polka dots, and the third had a faded SHIELD logo on it. Sharon decided to give that mug to Aunt Peggy. The kettle, an electric model that Sharon had bought after Aunt Peggy forgot to turn off the burner under her old one, clicked off, and Sharon made the tea. She put the three mugs, spoons, sugar, and milk onto a tray and carried it out into the living room. Fury had just helped Aunt Peggy to the table. Sharon set the tea tray down, poured a little bit of milk into Aunt Peggy’s tea, and set it in front of her. She took hers plain, and noticed that Fury added sugar and milk to his. 

They were silent for a moment as they took their first sips of tea. Aunt Peggy looked out the window and smiled. “The trees are happy today,” she said. “They’re such bright colors.” 

“It’s fall, Aunt Peggy,” Sharon told her. “Soon the leaves will fall off the trees, and it will be winter. We might get snow this year.” 

“Look at them moving. Do you think they’re talking to each other? I wonder what they’re saying.” 

Sharon shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Aunt Peggy, this is Nick Fury. He’s the Director of SHIELD. Do you remember SHIELD? Look at your teacup.” She pointed to the logo on Peggy’s mug. “You helped found SHIELD. Remember?” 

“It’s an honor to see you, ma’am,” Fury said. “It’s been a while since we last met. You retired back in 1996. I was just an agent at the time, but I remember your retirement party. It was like the passing of an era.”

“SHIELD,” Aunt Peggy said. She looked at her mug. 

Sharon nodded. “Yes, SHIELD. The intelligence agency. I work there, and I come to see you on Sundays. You used to work there, too. And Mr. Fury directs it.” 

“Nobody ever let me direct anything,” Aunt Peggy said. “That was always a job for the men.” Fury had the grace to look away. “But I knew my worth,” Aunt Peggy added. 

Sharon couldn’t help but smile. “You’re worth a lot, Aunt Peggy.” 

Aunt Peggy looked back at her mug. “Steve had a shield,” she said after a moment. “It was red, and it had a star on it.” 

Fury leaned forward. “Can you tell me about Steve, ma’am?” he asked. His glance fell on several small framed pictures on the table. One of them was an old photograph of Steve Rogers training at Camp Lehigh, short and skinny, but with a determined set to his jaw. Aunt Peggy followed Fury’s gaze and reached out to touch the photograph of Rogers. 

“Steve was always so sweet,” she said. “He was little, and then he was big. Howard did it. Steve told me that, one day. It was in Europe, back during the War. It was winter.” She took another sip of tea, and looked outside at the trees again. “It’s not winter now.” 

“No,” Sharon said. “It’s almost fall now. Can you talk a little more about . . . about Steve?” 

Aunt Peggy smiled. “He was very handsome. I was in love with him. He had a big red shield. He would throw it, and it always came right back to him. Everyone liked him, all the other soldiers. I got along with them, and I loved Steve. He had a big shield.” 

“What did he do with the shield, Aunt Peggy? Do you remember?” 

“He was a soldier,” Aunt Peggy said. “He used to go out with the other soldiers and fight, and then he would come back to the camp. He brought me flowers once, that he’d picked in a field while they were out fighting. He was very handsome, and I was in love with him. I kissed him.” 

Sharon blushed a little, but Fury was listening seriously and intently. “When did you kiss him, ma’am?” he asked. 

“It was in the car, you know, underneath the plane,” Aunt Peggy looked out the window for a moment. “I was in the car, and the man was in the car, and we were taking Steve to the plane. He was going on a mission in the plane, and I kissed him.” 

“What was the mission?” Sharon asked. “Do you remember?” 

“He died,” Aunt Peggy said. “He died on that mission. Howard tried to find him, but Steve died.” She gave a small sigh. “I miss Steve. Do you think – well, I haven’t asked the man in the church about it. Steve didn’t go to church. Do you think his people have the same heaven as we do? I want to see him again after I die.” 

Fury’s voice was warm and deep. “I think that all good people go to heaven, ma’am,” he said. He glanced at the remains of their tea. “Shall I take this into the kitchen, Agent?” he said. “You can have a few moments with your aunt.” 

Before Sharon had a chance to protest, Fury gathered the empty tea mugs onto the tray, and took it away. Aunt Peggy looked out of the window again. “The trees are talking to each other,” she said. “The leaves are so pretty. I wonder if they tell each other secrets.” 

“Well, they wouldn’t be secrets if they told them,” Sharon said, forcing a smile. 

Fury stepped back into the living room and nodded to Sharon. Sharon stood up and leaned over to kiss Peggy’s cheek. “I have to go now, Aunt Peggy,” she said. “I’ll come back to see you on Sunday.” 

“After church?” 

“Yes, after church.” 

“All right.” Aunt Peggy turned to Fury. “You’re a nice man. Do you know Steve?” 

Fury gave a tight little smile. “I read about Steve in history books,” he said, which Sharon supposed was true enough. 

“Steve was a good man. When I die, I want to see Steve again.” 

“It was good to see you, ma’am.” Fury nodded politely to Aunt Peggy. Sharon hurried out to the lounge to call Eloise back.

  

 

Mercifully, Fury waited until they were in the car, driving back into the city, before he said anything about the visit. “She’s confused,” he said. 

Sharon didn’t dare look at him. “But she knows who Captain Rogers is. You heard her.” 

Fury shook his head. “She thinks he’s dead, and she wants to see him in the afterlife. I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to meet.” 

“But, sir –“ 

“No. If she’s thinking like that, the shock might just kill her. My decision stands, Agent. I don’t want Captain Rogers told about Peggy Carter. We’ll let her have her little fantasies, and we’ll try to get him on board with the modern world.” 

Sharon recognized his tone. It was the voice that he used when he had made a decision, and the only thing left to do was figure out how to implement it. She knew that it would be useless to argue the point any further. Instead, she kept quiet and let Fury drive her back to the new apartment.

  

 

Captain Steve Rogers was moved into his new apartment six weeks later. Sharon was stationed in her own place, monitoring the move through headphones that Fury had brought over earlier in the day. She listened as Rogers walked through the rooms and put his suitcase down, just as she had done. He didn’t say much about the apartment, but thanked Fury politely for providing it. 

There was a pause, and then he asked, “Can I put things up on the walls?” 

“If you don’t like the décor, just let us know,” Fury said. “We can change it for you. Did you have something specific in mind?” 

There was a rustling sound. “I want to put this up by the door,” Rogers said. 

“It’s pretty,” Fury said. “Religious item, right?” 

“I bought it just after I got my orders to come down here.” 

There was a pause. Sharon wondered what Rogers had shown Fury. 

“All right. But put it on the inside. You can do that, right? Right by the door?” 

“Yeah. It’s not ideal, but it’ll do.” 

“Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world.   Get settled in, Captain, and report to my office at 0900 tomorrow morning. I’ll take you through the assignment and introduce you to the team.” 

Sharon heard the door click open and shut, and heard Fury’s footsteps moving down the stairs. As he had ordered, she remained inside for the rest of the day, occasionally turning up the sound on her headphones to check on Captain Rogers. She heard the rustles that he made unpacking his things, and later, several sharp taps as he nailed something up near his door. Around six o’clock, he made dinner from the supplies that Fury had left in his kitchen. Sharon turned off the headphones in the evening, but she didn’t need them to gather her final bit of information about Captain Rogers. 

She decided to make herself a cup of peppermint tea before going to bed. As she sat in the living room with her tea and a novel, she realized that the shared wall between her apartment and Captain Rogers’s was thinner than she had anticipated. She wasn’t sure what his floor plan was, so she didn’t know what room in his apartment he was sitting in. But whatever room he had chosen, he was sitting up against their shared wall. And Sharon could hear him weeping.


	2. This Plum Is Too Ripe

  1. **This Plum Is Too Ripe**



  

 

Sharon’s days now fell into an odd pattern. She rose early in the morning, and noted the time that Captain Rogers left the building for his morning run, and the time he returned. She left for work dressed in pink scrubs, just in case he happened to spot her on the stairs, and changed into her usual skirt suit once she reached the office. Each night, she wrote a log entry about the habits of a man whose face she saw only occasionally, and who rarely acknowledged her existence. It was entirely too reminiscent of seventh grade, except that she was being paid to do it. 

The other major difference between her current job and an adolescent fantasy was that she was old enough now to see that the man she observed from afar was deeply troubled. Captain Rogers kept a rigid routine, and he remained resolutely alone. No friends ever came over to visit, and as far as Sharon was aware, he never went out at night, or even stopped off for a beer with acquaintances after work. Sometimes, he listened to old-fashioned music, but he never sang along. When she contrived to run into him by the building’s mail boxes, she could see that his face was pale and drawn. The only mail he ever received was catalogues and junk mail, which he recycled immediately, along with the occasional bill, which he kept. Some nights, when he wept against the shared wall, Sharon found herself wanting to cry as well. 

“This isn’t working,” she told Fury during one of her weekly check-ins. “He’s the loneliest, saddest person I’ve ever seen. He walks around with his own little dark cloud over his head.” 

Fury sighed and looked down at his desk. “Still having trouble with the modern world, I guess. Do you think he’s an immediate risk?” 

“Sir?” 

“Is he in immediate danger of harming himself or others?” 

Sharon looked helplessly down at her notes. “He isn’t in immediate danger of doing anything. That’s part of the problem.” 

“Then I’m afraid there’s really nothing we can do.” 

Sharon glanced up sharply, and Fury pushed a file folder toward her with an air of defeat. “As hard as it is for some of the younger agents to believe,” he said, “I’m not perfect. I admit, we kind of painted ourselves into a corner here. Read these.” 

Sharon picked up the folder. It was full of reports filed by Agent Brock Rumlow, the deputy commander of the STRIKE squad. His version of Captain Rogers was cool, competent, and in control at all times, leading the team with efficiency and humor, a man who expected the best from his men and gave them his best in return. He was nothing like the withdrawn, isolated man who occasionally almost returned the little smiles and waves that Sharon sent his way whenever she caught his eye. 

She set the files back on Fury’s desk, her mind reeling as she tried to match the Captain Rogers she knew with the soldier Rumlow described. “He’s one person at work and another person at home,” she said. “That doesn’t worry you?” 

“On the contrary. It worries me a great deal. The problem is that these,” Fury indicated the file full of Rumlow’s reports, “are the only official reports that we have on Rogers. Yours . . . well, let’s just say that they’ve been filed in a more secure location.” 

Sharon bit back a question about whether that file might be circular, settling on a more neutral, “Sir?” 

Fury regarded her for a moment, and then pressed a button on his desk. The lights in his office dimmed, the door lock clicked, and the windows shaded over. Whatever he had to say, he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Things are going on that you don’t know about, Agent Thirteen,” Fury said. “At this point, all I can tell you is to keep up your work, but don’t let anyone know about it. You report to me, and only to me. Captain Rogers is not to know that you’re part of this organization at all.” 

That was the voice that Fury used when he was unwilling to accept any discussion of a problem at all. There was no point in arguing further. Sharon nodded. “Yes, sir.” 

“You’ll be given a copy of Captain Rogers’s schedule. It’s probably best that you avoid coming into the office at all on days when he’s scheduled to be on the premises. Wouldn’t want him to get a glimpse of you in the elevator or anything like that.” 

“No.” At least it would give her time to get a jump on her Christmas shopping. And she might even be able to fit in a few extra visits to Aunt Peggy. Even if Aunt Peggy couldn’t always remember what she’d said twenty minutes earlier, she was still unusually easy to talk to about distressing problems. 

Fury pressed the button on his desk again, and the light returned, and the door clicked open. “Dismissed, Agent Thirteen.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Sharon rose to her feet, and then another question struck her. “Sir?” 

“What is it?” 

“Just . . .” She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I just need to know. Do you read the reports that I send you?” 

Fury nodded, a single incline of his head. “Every word. I promise.” 

It was the best that she could hope for, at this point. “Thank you, sir.” 

Fury flashed a quick smile at her, and Sharon left his office.

  

 

After that meeting, Sharon decided that she absolutely could not continue her day without a cup of very strong coffee. Fortunately, most of SHIELD shared her opinion about the importance of caffeine, and the SHIELD cafeteria offered surprisingly good coffee. Sharon knew that part of the reason was to discourage SHIELD agents from bringing in covered coffee shop cups that could hold all sorts of things besides coffee, but at the moment, she didn’t care. SHIELD coffee was hot, strong, served in mugs, cheaper than Starbucks, and just an elevator ride away. 

“Sharon! I haven’t seen you in ages! Where have you been?” 

Sharon looked up, and her day brightened immediately. Standing in front of her was her friend Gail, who worked in the Archive department. Sharon and Gail had started work on the same day, and had met over lunch, both still reeling from the strange things they’d seen that day. Sharon admired Gail’s level-headed professionalism, as well as her distinctly sardonic sense of humor. Because Gail worked in Archives, her schedule was relatively consistent, and Sharon made an effort to schedule as many of her own lunch breaks as possible around Gail’s lunch time. Her current assignment had made that more difficult than usual, and she hadn’t seen her friend for a few weeks. 

Gail put her coffee on the table and sat down in front of Sharon in a fluid, graceful movement that reminded Sharon of the absurdly self-assured and confident women she had seen in yogurt or tampon commercials. Her hair bounced around her shoulders as if it had a life of its own. Gail leaned back, took a sip of her coffee, and let out a sigh of relief. 

“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “I have been dying for a cup of coffee all afternoon. Sharon, I have not seen you for so long. How have you been?” 

Sharon shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Did you do something with your hair? It’s all bouncy.” 

Gail laughed. “Oh my God, you noticed! Thank you. None of the other archivists have said a word.” 

“Well, they’re all men.” 

“You got that right!” Gail rolled her eyes. “Anyway, promise you won’t mock me. I went to my hairdresser a couple of weeks ago, and . . .” she gave a theatrical glance around the room, and lowered her voice, “I brought a picture of Kate Middleton. Can you believe it? One of the ones where she’s wearing a suit and has that little wave at the bottom of her hair. I have never done that before. But you know what? My hairdresser said it would be totally easy for her to do, and that my hair was just right for it. So now I have Kate Middleton hair. Ta-da!” 

Sharon smiled. “It looks great on you.” 

Gail flipped her hair once more for show. “Thank you. I appreciate that. But you haven’t answered my question. What’s been going on? You look, I don’t know, stressed out.” 

“My life’s gotten weird.” Sharon scrunched her nose to indicate that “weird” was meant to stand for many things that she couldn’t say. Gail gave her a pointed glance over her coffee cup. 

“Weird as in you’re not allowed to talk about it, or weird as in you don’t know how to talk about it?” 

“A little of both, maybe.” 

Gail took this in stride, with just a nod of understanding. Then she jerked her head up, as if something had just occurred to her, and leaned forward. “Is it . . . is it your aunt?” she asked. “Is she doing okay?” 

When Sharon didn’t answer immediately, Gail reached out and placed her hand on top of Sharon’s. “Oh, honey. It’s hard, isn’t it? Is there anything I can do to help you?” 

Sharon froze, all of her attention suddenly focused on the point where Gail’s hand covered her own. Her breath caught in her throat, and she could not look away from Gail’s fingernails, filed smooth and round, and painted a cheerful shade of pink. 

“Sharon?” Gail asked. “Sharon, are you okay?” 

Her voice was clear and warm, and Sharon felt that she might actually drown in Gail’s concerned blue gaze. Something tense and eerily familiar uncoiled in her stomach. She recognized it with a shock, and shook herself out of her trance. 

“Oh. Oh, I’m fine. I’m just . . . I’m just a little tired.” She forced a little smile. “I really needed this coffee.” 

“I hear that,” Gail said, leaning back. “Sharon, honey, we’ve been friends long enough that I can tell you this. You look like shit. I know you have vacation days, because you never use them. Take a day off tomorrow and do something that you enjoy. There’s a reason they call them mental health days.” When Sharon didn’t answer immediately, Gail raised her eyebrows. “Do you want me to come? I will totally give up a vacation day for this. We can have a girls’ day out.” 

That offer sounded entirely too tempting, and Sharon quickly shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said. “I appreciate the offer, though. I think I will take a day off, but I’ll probably just spend it sleeping in. Maybe visit my aunt.” 

Gail nodded. “You do what you need to do,” she said. “I’ll be here if you want to come and chat.” 

“Thank you.” Sharon finished her coffee, and got up. Gail rose as well, and wrapped Sharon in a warm, full-body hug for an instant that Sharon wished could go on forever. 

As Sharon left the cafeteria, she decided to make a note of the days when she was allowed to be in the office so that she could be sure to have lunch with Gail. But before that, she decided, she absolutely needed to take some time to visit Aunt Peggy and have a chat. As terrified as she was to admit it, the coil of intense feeling that had sliced through her belly when Gail touched her hand wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. She had felt it for Jessie Becker when they lived on the same dorm floor their sophomore year of college, but she had laughed it off as hormones. The three months that she’d showed up to calisthenics twenty minutes early each morning during SHIELD induction training just to watch Laurel Monson stretching had been a little harder to justify, but a dash of hero worship had done the trick. 

But Sharon was a grown woman, and a full SHIELD agent now. A small corner of her mind screamed that she knew perfectly well what that heavy feeling in her core was trying to tell her. However, the rest of her wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet. A chat with Aunt Peggy would definitely help to settle her, she thought. Even though she couldn’t remember what she’d said twenty minutes earlier, Aunt Peggy still seemed to know an awful lot about things that were really important.

  

 

Aunt Peggy smiled when she saw Sharon the next day. “That’s the lady who comes after church,” she told Eloise. Eloise nodded. 

“It’s a good day for you, Peggy,” she said. Just before she left to go to the lounge for a break, Sharon drew her into a corner near the door. 

“My work schedule’s changed a bit,” she said. “I can come to visit more often than just Sundays. Should I call ahead and let you know when I’m coming?” 

Eloise shook her head. “No need for that. Our days are pretty routine around here. You wouldn’t be interrupting anything.” 

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Enjoy your break.” Sharon squelched a little thread of sadness at how limited Aunt Peggy’s life appeared to be, and went into the kitchen. “I’m going to make tea, Aunt Peggy,” she called. 

“Oh, good,” Aunt Peggy said. “I like tea.” 

Sharon brewed two cups, and put a few chocolate chip cookies on a plate. She arranged the tea things on the table, but pulled a photo album off of the bookshelf before she sat down. 

Aunt Peggy smiled as she poured milk into her tea. “I love tea time,” she said. “I love to drink tea and look at the trees outside. What do you think they say to each other?” 

Sharon forced a smile. “I think they’re wondering who all the people who live in this building are,” she said. She took a sip of her own tea, and set the photo album on the table. “Can we look at pictures today, Aunt Peggy?” 

“All right.” Aunt Peggy eyed the plate with the chocolate chip cookies. “Those are very posh biscuits.” 

“They’re just Chips Ahoy cookies. They came from your cupboard.” 

“Might I have one?” Aunt Peggy looked hopeful. 

Sharon pasted a smile on her face. “They’re your cookies, Aunt Peggy. Of course you can have one.” 

Aunt Peggy giggled just like a little girl and picked up a cookie. Sharon opened the photo album, and blinked. It wasn’t the album full of the wartime photos that Aunt Peggy could identify most often. Instead, most of the photos seemed to be from after the war. A few were even in color. They seemed to be stuck into the album in no particular order. An image of Aunt Peggy in her forties, with a Jackie Kennedy bouffant and a red dress posing with a gaudily decorated aluminum Christmas tree sat next to a black and white portrait of a stiff-looking couple dressed in 1940s fashions. There was also a picture of Aunt Peggy as Sharon remembered her from her childhood, just starting to go gray, sitting at a table in front of a cake with wrapped birthday presents nearby. 

“Oh, these are pretty,” Aunt Peggy said. 

“Who are the people in the portrait?” Sharon asked. “That old one there.” 

Aunt Peggy peered closely at it. “I don’t know,” she said. “The man was English, I think. I feel like he must have been my friend.” 

Sharon turned over a page, and found a photograph of Howard Stark, dapper, and just a bit gray at the temples, taken at his wedding. His wife wore a simple white gown, and the fluffiest veil that Sharon had ever seen perched right on top of her head. Sharon couldn’t suppress a giggle. “Okay, that’s weird,” she said. “I keep forgetting that you were friends with Howard Stark back in the day.” 

“I went to Switzerland with Howard,” Peggy said. “It was during the War. He flew us there in a very small plane, and we ate fondue. It wasn’t fashionable then. We didn’t have that sort of thing in England.” She looked more closely at the photograph of Howard and Maria Stark. “Howard made things for Steve. I loved Steve. Are there any pictures of Steve in here?” 

Sharon shook her head. “I don’t think so, Aunt Peggy. Most of these look like they were taken after the war.” 

“Steve died in the war,” Aunt Peggy said solemnly. 

Sharon thought fleetingly of the shuttered, closed-off expression that Captain Rogers had worn the last time she’d seen him in the hall. Then she recalled the dull look in his eyes as he recycled yet another stack of catalogues and junk mail. It struck her that Aunt Peggy wasn’t entirely wrong in her assessment. Then she turned the next page in the photo album and forgot all about Captain Rogers. 

There was a photograph of a beautiful girl in a waitress uniform. Her curly hair was pulled back from her face, but bounced freely over her shoulders. She looked directly at the camera with open, inviting eyes, and her smile was so bright that Sharon found herself smiling back even before she thought about it. “Who’s this, Aunt Peggy?” 

“That’s Angie,” Aunt Peggy said, and she smiled at the picture, too. “She was my friend in New York. I lived with her for a while.” 

This was news. Sharon couldn’t decide which part startled her more, hearing Aunt Peggy say something so coherent about anyone who wasn’t Captain Rogers, or learning that Aunt Peggy had lived with another woman. Two different questions struggled to get out of Sharon’s mouth, and she sat speechless for a few moments. 

Aunt Peggy didn’t seem to notice. She continued to gaze fondly at the picture of Angie. “She got me a room at the Griffith Hotel,” she said. “And then later, we lived in Howard’s house.” 

“Wait,” Sharon said. “Did Howard live there, too? With you?” 

“Angie stayed in New York,” Aunt Peggy went on, apparently not having registered Sharon’s questions. “She was an actress, in the theater. I went to see her act. She played – oh, what was that woman’s name? The bossy one. You know, in that play. About the bossy lady and her nephew.” 

Sharon opened her mouth, and shut it again. She shrugged. “Sorry, Aunt Peggy,” she said. “I’m not that much of a theater person.”

“Well, I went to see that,” Aunt Peggy said. “Angie was lovely. I liked living with her. It was easy, because we were so close.”

Sharon took a deep breath and glanced at the photo of Angie for courage. Angie smiled broadly, beautiful and alluring and vibrant, even from seventy years in the past. “Aunt Peggy,” Sharon said, “What if I loved someone like Angie? What if I loved her in the way that you loved Steve?” 

Aunt Peggy contemplated Angie’s picture for a while. “Did you know Angie?” she asked. “You’re so young.” 

Sharon sighed and shook her head. “No, Aunt Peggy. I didn’t. I just meant . . . what if I loved someone as pretty and as nice as Angie? How would that be?” 

“Oh.” Aunt Peggy smiled. “Well, that’s lucky. Angie was brave and kind, and we had such fun together. It’s good to love people like that.” 

“Were you and Angie ever . . .?” Sharon couldn’t quite bring herself to complete the question. 

“I loved being Angie’s friend,” Aunt Peggy said. “She was an actress. I saw her act once. It was on Broadway, so it was special.” 

“It does sound like fun.” Sharon guessed that she would not get much more from Aunt Peggy on the subject. It wasn’t quite sage advice to put her heart at ease, but it was probably the best that Aunt Peggy could do. She seemed vaguely in favor of the idea, though Sharon wondered whether or not Aunt Peggy had actually understood the question. And, if nothing else, Aunt Peggy’s memory of her friend meant that they had gained another topic of conversation. 

Sharon still wondered how close Aunt Peggy had been to Angie, if Angie had left an impression nearly as strong as Captain Rogers on Aunt Peggy’s memory. She wondered if she would still remember Gail like that when she was as old as Aunt Peggy. It wasn’t until she was on her way home that she allowed to imagine herself as an old woman, and Gail, equally as old, cracking jokes at her side as they sat together in a nursing home. The thought made her smile to herself all the way home.

 


	3. Plant A Radish

  1. **Plant A Radish**



  

 

Late fall gave way to winter. It was fully dark when Captain Rogers woke up to go take his morning run, and it was still dark when he returned. Sharon had developed a small degree of personal contact with him at the very beginning of December, using a holiday as an excuse to encounter him on the stairs one morning as he was returning from his run, and she was pretending to leave for a shift at the hospital. 

“Hey,” she said, as cheerfully as she could manage. “You live next door to me, right? You’ve got the window that faces out over Connecticut Avenue?” 

“Yeah, I do.” The look of mild curiosity on his face was the most interest he’d shown in anything since she’d first met him. 

Sharon smiled. “Then it must have been your candles that I saw in the window last night. They were pretty.” 

“Thank you.” He ducked his head, and his eyes turned inward for a moment. “It’s Hanukkah,” he said softly. “There’ll be a few more nights.”

“Well, happy Hanukkah, neighbor,” Sharon chirped. That got a flicker of a smile from Captain Rogers, and Sharon counted that as a good day, even before the sun rose. 

The lights had burned in his window for three more nights, and Hanukkah seemed to cheer him up a little bit. At least, Sharon did not hear any night-time weeping for the duration of the holiday. But when it was over, and there were no more candles in his window, Captain Rogers returned to his listless silence. 

On days when Sharon was not allowed into SHIELD headquarters, she went to her tiny allotted room at the hospital and did research. She attempted to learn as much as she could about Captain Rogers’s history, and that turned into the absorbing challenge of separating fact from propaganda. She also looked up old Broadway actresses until she found a biography of Angel Martine, born Angela Martinelli in 1921. Her most notable achievement seemed to have been winning a Tony for Best Actress in a Broadway revival of _Gypsy_ , where she had played Mama Rose, about ten years before Sharon had been born. She had died in 2004. 

Sharon began to take particular care of her appearance on days that she was allowed to come into the office. She made sure that her skirt suits were always impeccably neat, even replacing a jacket and a few blouses that seemed a bit out of style. She also made sure to dab on at least a little bit of lip gloss and mascara and wear nice earrings, and dug a pretty string of pearls that Aunt Peggy had given her for her college graduation out of her jewelry box. At first, she told herself that she was simply enjoying looking like a professional SHIELD agent on days when she didn’t have to wear pink scrubs and sneakers. But it was also true that the days she went into the office were also the days that she met Gail for lunch in the cafeteria. 

She didn’t mention any of her recent confusion to Gail, preferring simply to enjoy Gail’s company and bask in the glow of being near her friend. Between Captain Rogers and Aunt Peggy, most of the people Sharon paid attention to were lost and withdrawn, and Gail’s lighthearted energy was infectious. Just being around Gail and watching her laugh over a chicken Caesar salad or a slice of cafeteria pizza was enough to brighten Sharon’s day. She would not risk dampening Gail’s enthusiasm for life by burdening her with the news that their friendship could change in such a significant way. Instead, Sharon dressed impeccably, ate her own lunch and chatted and laughed, and never breathed a word about Gail’s luxurious hair, sparkling eyes, and long, slim legs that extended from hip-hugging pencil skirts.

 

 

One dark, rainy Monday morning near the middle of December, Sharon opened her work e-mail and found two messages, sent in quick succession. One was from Barbara Tinley, SHIELD’s HR director, sending out a mass invitation to the annual SHIELD holiday party. Sharon had been to this event before. It was held in the building atrium, the only space big enough to accommodate the expected numbers. Most of the people who attended were the desk agents or the others who worked in the building, but one could usually count on some of the field agents who happened to be in town showing up and telling interesting, if heavily redacted, stories. There was a large Christmas tree, usually decorated in red, white, and blue, plates of indifferent finger food provided by a specially contracted caterer, and an open bar. It was the quintessence of a company holiday party. But even so, Sharon was peeved to discover that the second e-mail was from Director Fury, politely but firmly ordering her not to attend, on the grounds that Captain Rogers would be in attendance, and he was still not to know who she was. 

Sharon allowed herself five minutes to sulk, but only got through two of them before another thought distracted her. She had yet to see Captain Rogers show any evidence of a relationship with another human being outside of work, and yet Fury had assured her that he would be attending the SHIELD holiday party. This suggested that Captain Rogers had received his own direct orders regarding the party at some point. Sharon recalled the glow of the Hanukkah candles in his window, and thought about the Christmas tree that would dominate the SHIELD atrium. Upon further contemplation, she decided that she was, in fact, perfectly happy not to have to be there. She could certainly spend the time with Aunt Peggy, thinking up yet another answer to the inevitable query into the conversation of trees. 

That was the excuse she gave Gail over lunch the next day, when Gail asked whether they could coordinate outfits. Gail looked a bit disappointed, but laid her hand over Sharon’s. “You are so good with your aunt,” she said. “I hope she’s very proud of you.” 

Sharon gazed at Gail’s hand covering her own. “Gail, she doesn’t know who I am most of the time.” 

“Well, then, I’m proud of you. It can’t be easy, but you’re doing such a good job at it.” 

“Thank you. That means a lot.” Coming from Gail, it meant even more than Sharon would ever admit. 

Gail laughed, and actually squeezed Sharon’s hand a little bit. “I’ll tell you every detail about the party,” she said. “All the gossip. You’ll feel like you were actually there.” 

“I’m looking forward to it,” Sharon said.

  

 

In the end, it turned out that Sunset Glen had scheduled a small Christmas gathering on the afternoon of the day that SHIELD was having its party. Sharon brought a large Godiva gift basket for Eloise. Then she put a Santa hat on and escorted Aunt Peggy downstairs to one of the social rooms, where punch and cookies were available, and one of the aides had commandeered the piano. For some reason, Aunt Peggy still remembered quite a few Christmas carols, and she joined the rest of the residents, happily singing along to “Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” and “Oh Christmas Tree.” Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and many of the other residents greeted Aunt Peggy by name. 

“I knew you’d find something to keep you busy,” Gail said later. “And it sounds like both you and your aunt had fun.” 

“We did,” Sharon said. “How was the work party?” 

Gail shrugged. “It was a work party,” she said. “The STRIKE team was there, so that was interesting for about half an hour.” 

“That long?” Sharon asked with a smile. 

Gail returned a knowing smirk. “That was about how long it took them to start getting drunk,” she said. “I bet they were pre-gaming, too. Jack Rollins tried to grab my ass, but he missed. Who knows how he made it onto the team if he can’t hit the broad side of a barn, right? Or the barn side of a broad?” She grinned hugely at her own joke. 

Sharon had her own thoughts about the breadth of Gail’s barn side, but elected not to share them. “He’s got to be good for something. Battering ram? Team mascot?” 

“Molotov cocktail,” Gail suggested. “Just hold a lighter near his hair. Instant grease fire. Speaking of mascots, there was one weird thing. Captain Rogers came to the party! Can you imagine? Actual Captain America! There he was, just like all the rest of us peons.” 

“Yeah?” Sharon did her best I’m-just-an-agent-who’s-hero-worshipped-Captain-America-all-my-life eyebrow raise. “What was he like?” 

Gail sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. She pursed her lips, and looked out the window for a moment, gathering her thoughts before she spoke. “Not like I expected,” she said a last. “A little . . . I don’t know. Shy, maybe? The Director introduced him, and he shook hands with a few people, but he mostly just hung out way over to the side of the party. Spent most of the time talking to, I don’t know, this awkward guy I don’t really know. One of the technicians, maybe.” 

Sharon nodded. That sounded like the Captain Rogers who lived next door to her. She wondered if there was some discreet way that she could track down the technician and either learn his secret for getting Captain Rogers to talk or persuade him to switch jobs with her. 

“Anyway, Brock Rumlow got a bug up his butt about something, so I left,” Gail went on. “Toni and Monica and I all met up and went out to a bar for drinks after. Honestly, I think you had a better evening, partying with the old folks.” She sighed and began to rifle through the pile of folders that sat on the chair next to her. 

“Lots to do?” Sharon asked, a little sad that it looked as though lunch would be ending soon. 

“Work, work, work. The bosses have no idea what we actually do in Archives, so they’ve decided that what we need for Christmas is a project.” Gail flipped a lock of her Kate Middleton hair out of her face. “We have to find and fill out all this missing data from the really crumbly old files. Like, ancient stuff from the 50s, and even some records back from the 40s, the old SSR days.” 

She looked up, and smiled at Sharon. “All right, my dear. I have to go and dive deep into mummified banker boxes. When will you be back in for lunch again?” 

Sharon shook her head. Fury had updated her schedule just that morning, saying that the STRIKE team, including Captain Rogers, was going to be spending two weeks on the premises for training with some new equipment. “Not for a while, I think. I’ll let you know.” 

“It’s always good to see you,” Gail said. “Take care of yourself, and say hi to your aunt.”

  

 

After lunch, Sharon took advantage of her last day in the office for two weeks, and pulled some of Brock Rumlow’s reports on the STRIKE team. If his comments about Captain Rogers were going to be on the public record instead of hers, then she was bound and determined to take advantage of that. At first, the reports resembled the ones that she had seen earlier in Fury’s office. Captain Rogers was an excellent tactician, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, preternaturally adept with his vibranium shield, a decent and honorable man, respected by those under his command. But, as Sharon read further, odd and jarring notes began to appear. 

Captain Rogers took on assignments that most officers would consider too dangerous, and he took them on alone, or at most with just Rumlow or Rollins for backup. The best tactical mind of the STRIKE team often insisted on being the first one to enter hostile territory. More than once, he had moved to pull one of the squad out of danger, and had placed himself in danger by doing so. And on one or two occasions, when the squad had been airdropped into hostile territory, Captain Rogers had jumped without a parachute. 

Sharon read these reports with a growing mixture of horror and fascination. Clearly, none of these escapades had killed Captain Rogers, and she had never noticed him showing any obvious signs of injury. From what she could gather in his official reports, Rumlow seemed to be more impressed at the Captain’s abilities than angry or alarmed. 

Sharon returned to an account of Captain Rogers jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and took a few minutes to consider its implications. Any normal human being attempting that feat would . . . well, _splash_. Clearly, Captain Rogers was confident enough that he would survive that kind of free fall, and it was true that he wasn’t really a normal human being. But, Sharon wondered, how had he learned that he could do that? And what had driven him to test the idea in the first place? When she considered that she was asking these questions about her downcast and isolated neighbor, Rumlow’s reports suddenly struck her as unbearably sinister. 

Fury was reading these glowing reports, but he had assured Sharon that he was reading hers as well. She was almost ready to get up and go knock on his door to beg him to do something about a SHIELD agent who was clearly in deep trouble, but then she remembered something he had told her the first day she began her assignment. 

_What does Captain America need protection from?  
_

_Himself, mostly._

Fury had been right about that. Sharon wondered now if he had known just how right he was. She packed up the file with Rumlow’s reports and sent it to be re-shelved, and then took a long walk, just to breathe some outdoor air and get her body moving so that she didn’t have to sit with the uncomfortable suspicion growing in her stomach.

 

 

In the end, it wasn’t Rumlow’s reports that drove her to action, and neither was it the time she spent one night listening through Fury’s bugs as Captain Rogers accidentally dropped a dish on the floor and choked back actual tears as he cleaned it up. In the end, it was her regular Sunday afternoon with Aunt Peggy that convinced her to address the problem that it seemed nobody but Sharon could see. 

Aunt Peggy hadn’t been doing well. She had cut her arm, but could not remember how the injury had happened. More worryingly, she had begun to forget some of the beginnings of her repertoire of stories about Captain Rogers. She crumbled a cookie in her trembling fingers as she stared at the old framed photograph. 

“How did that happen?” she asked. “We were in a farmhouse, but where was it?” She glanced miserably at Sharon. “You must think I’m awfully stupid. A stupid old woman who doesn’t know anything.” 

“You’re not stupid, Aunt Peggy,” Sharon told her. “You’re just having trouble remembering.” 

“Steve didn’t forget things,” Aunt Peggy said. “I loved Steve. Why can’t I see him again? I want to go to sleep and then Steve will come back for me.” 

After the visit was over, Sharon sat in her car in the parking lot at Sunset Glen, unable to make herself turn the key in the ignition. Starting the car meant driving away from her distraught, frustrated Aunt Peggy and back to the apartment where the bugs revealed the quiet, lonely existence of Captain Rogers. Caught between two desperately unhappy people, both of whom were her responsibility and neither of whom she could help, Sharon put her head on the steering wheel and cried. 

When she finished, she drove to a bookstore that had a little coffee nook, bought a magazine and a cappuccino, and spent an hour putting off going home. As she drank the coffee, her mind wandered, and an idea began to take shape.

Fury’s plan wasn’t working. Sharon was a professional observer of people and situations, and she had spent more than enough time with both Captain Rogers and Aunt Peggy to know that, whatever Nicholas J. Fury wanted to believe, both of them were sinking fast. Fury was good at his job, and mostly a fair boss. However, he did have his flaws, and one of them was that he loathed being given advice or suggestions by someone as junior to him as Sharon was. He had decreed that neither Captain Rogers nor Aunt Peggy should know about the other’s presence, and he wasn’t likely to listen to evidence that this plan was failing. If Sharon wanted to fulfill her duty of care to Aunt Peggy and her task of protecting Captain Rogers, she was going to have to do it on her own. 

It would be insubordinate, underhanded, and probably illegal. There might be an investigation by Internal Affairs and hearings. Sharon might lose her job, and she might even go to prison. But, as she sipped her warm cappuccino and flicked through the pages of the magazine without really seeing it, Sharon decided that she didn’t really care, as long as whatever she did worked. 

She would have to be subtle about it, and be as careful as she could, not only to avoid being caught, but to avoid getting anyone else caught. As loath as she was to cause trouble for anyone else, she would have to involve at least one or two other people in her plans, if only to hide the blame a little bit. And the more she thought about what to do, the more she realized that Gail would be the best accomplice for the task. Sharon wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of risking both of their futures as well as their friendship, but in the end, it seemed better than simply sitting in her apartment and doing nothing as two good people fell victim to their own minds. 

At least she had never told Gail how she felt about her. Sharon clung to the belief that this would make things easier as she took out her phone to call Gail and schedule a girls’ day out.

  

 

In the end, it was almost too easy. She and Gail went and had their nails done and then had lunch at a café a few blocks south of Florida Avenue. After lunch, Sharon suggested a stroll in the winter sunshine in Meridian Hill Park. As they walked, Gail told Sharon all about the new Archives project of completing records that were more than half a century old. 

“You wouldn’t believe how much you can find online, if you know where to look,” Gail said. “But sometimes, it’s just not there. I’m spending so much time in the library now.” 

Sharon took a deep breath. Her moment had arrived. “I wonder if some of the more senior agents might be able to help you,” she said. “Talk to some of the older people, see what they remember. Sort of like a genealogy.” 

Gail smiled. “Sharon, that is such a good idea!” she said. “You’re so smart. I spend so much time working with old records that I never think to just go and ask people.” 

“It’s worth a try.” Sharon pasted a smile onto her face, and ignored the butterflies in her stomach as she and Gail turned a corner and came upon a statue of Joan of Arc, in full armor on a horse, charging fearlessly into battle.

  

 

Sharon walked around in a near-constant state of dread for the next few days. At first, nothing happened. No SHIELD internal security people showed up at her door, and she didn’t hear anything to suggest that they’d raided Archives. After a while, Sharon decided that, in fact, nothing had happened at all. Gail hadn’t picked up on the extremely veiled hint that Sharon had given her. Everyone was safe, the whole affair could be forgotten, and Sharon would just have to find some other way to take care of the two ancient souls in her care. 

She was just going down to the basement one afternoon to put a load of sheets and towels into the washing machine when the building’s front door opened. Captain Rogers walked in, and Sharon froze, shocked at the change in his appearance. He held his head up, his eyes were bright, and there was a distinct spring in his step. When he caught sight of her, he gave a small but genuine smile, and actually waved at her. She smiled and waggled her fingers back, and listened as he hurried up the stairs. 

Sharon hurried down into the laundry room, and shoved laundry, detergent, and quarters furiously into the machine. She’d thought that she would be thrilled if Captain Rogers ever managed to emerge from his gloomy fog, but now that it had happened, she found herself panicking. Either he had finally found the energy and the will to make an actual suicide attempt, in which case Sharon needed to stop him, or he had recently received some good news about a friend from his past. In which case, Sharon would soon be in deep trouble herself. She slammed the washing machine door shut, pushed the button to start the cycle, and bolted upstairs. 

Big band music played behind Captain Rogers’s door. While it wasn’t the first time that she’d heard music from his apartment, it was rare enough that she wasn’t sure if he was actually happy enough to listen or trying to mask the sound of something horrible. She paused at the top of the stairs, unsure whether to burst into his apartment or hers, when her phone rang. The screen said simply, “Director.” 

Sharon scooted into her apartment and closed the door. “Agent Thirteen,” she said softly, hoping that Captain Rogers would not hear her over his music. 

“Agent,” came Fury’s voice. Sharon couldn’t tell whether he was angry or not. “Come into the office now. We have an urgent situation.” 

Sharon swallowed, and took a deep breath. “With respect, sir, I’m not sure I can leave my post. Protectee is . . . agitated.” 

“He’ll be fine, Agent. My office. Now.” And the line went dead. 

Sharon took one more deep breath. That had been a direct order, and she could not disobey. There wasn’t even time to run a comb through her hair or change out of the torn blue jeans she saved for laundry day. It was time to face the consequences of her insubordination.

 


	4. A Tender And Callow Fellow

  1. **A Tender And Callow Fellow**



  

 

Fury was waiting when Sharon stepped off the elevator. He made no comment on her disheveled appearance, and in fact, did not say a word until they were in his office, and he had secured it. Sharon stood at attention in front of his desk, feeling mildly foolish to be standing like that in torn jeans, a hair scarf, and a t-shirt that said “I’ll Try To Be Nicer If You Try To Be Smarter.” Fury sat down behind his desk. 

“At ease, Agent,” he said. “Take a seat. There’s something I want to discuss with you.” 

Sharon kept her face blank as she sat down. “Sir?” 

“Some plans have changed,” Fury said. “I don’t know how, but Captain Rogers found out that Agent Carter is living in the city.” Sharon waited for the disappointment, the anger, the sentence. But Fury just sighed and glanced down at the pen he was rolling in his fingers. 

“Sir?” Sharon asked. “Does this mean . . ?” 

“Oh, I’m not taking you off his protection detail,” Fury said. “He’s a high value target, probably higher than either of you suspects. No, this is just a minor setback. It was really only a matter of time before he found out. He’s not stupid.” 

Slowly, Sharon’s toes began to unclench, and she blinked as small muscles in her neck and shoulders relaxed. “No,” she said, realizing after a moment that Fury wanted a response. “No, he’s very much not stupid. Was he . . ?” 

“He wasn’t angry,” Fury said. “Not that he didn’t have a right to be, I guess. He was just insistent. Wanted to see Agent Carter as soon as he could. That’s why I’ve called you in.” 

Sharon sat up a little straighter. “Do you want me to take him there, sir?” 

Fury shook his head. “No. You maintain your cover.” He leaned back and glanced out the window. “I haven’t authorized a visit yet. What I want from you is your absolute honest opinion. Is Agent Carter able to handle a visit from Captain Rogers at this point?” 

Sharon opened her mouth, and then shut it again. This was a question she’d avoided asking herself for a while now. But it had to be faced, especially in light of Aunt Peggy’s recent string of bad days. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “She’s been upset recently. She’s lost more memories, and she knows it. She still remembers Captain Rogers, though.” 

“I know she means a lot to you,” Fury said, his voice gentler than usual. “She means a lot to all of SHIELD, but she’s special to you. I just want to be clear about this. Badly handled, a shock like this could kill her.” 

And just like that, Sharon knew the answer. “Permission to speak freely, sir?” 

“Granted. I want your honest opinion.” 

“My great-aunt is an old lady, sir. She’s outlived her husband and most of her friends. One of my cousins lives on the other side of the country, and the other lives in London. Sir, the only things she has left in her life are me, Eloise, and whatever memories she has left. Most of those are about Captain Rogers.” Sharon’s eyes stung, and she blinked furiously, determined that she wouldn’t cry in front of the Director. 

Fury said nothing, but reached into a drawer in his desk and handed her a tissue. Sharon pressed it against her eyes, and pinched her lips together for a moment. She drew in a ragged breath and let it out again. 

“Sir, I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . she’s down to nothing now, and she can’t live forever. The only thing she wants out of life is to see Captain Rogers again. If – if it did kill her . . . would that be so bad? She’d be happy.” 

Fury leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands together. He looked at Sharon solemnly for a long moment. “I see,” he said. “Well. You’ve given me some things to think about, Agent. I’ll keep you informed as I make my decision. Is there anything else I need to know before I let you go?” 

Sharon thought for a moment. She didn’t want to push; Fury had already shown more flexibility than she’d thought that he could. But he had asked. “Sir,” she said slowly, “the only thing I’d add is that my great-aunt isn’t the only person whose health and well-being are at stake here.” 

“So noted,” Fury said. He rose to his feet, and Sharon followed suit. “Thank you for coming in at such short notice, Agent,” he said. “As I say, you’ll be kept in the loop as this progresses. In the meantime, keep on doing exactly what you were doing. Dismissed.” 

Fury unlocked his office. Sharon gave a crisp nod, and was enormously proud of how well she maintained her composure all the way out of the building and into the parking garage. Once she was behind the wheel of her car, she let out a deep groan of relief before driving home to rescue her laundry.

  

 

That evening, while Sharon was flipping through the channels on the TV, her phone rang again. This time, it was Gail. Thinking quickly, Sharon turned up the volume on _Glee_ , and then took the phone to her bedroom, the corner of her apartment that was the farthest away from her shared wall. “Gail,” she said, smiling as the name left her mouth. “What’s up?” 

“Oh my God,” Gail said over the phone. “You’ll never believe it. _The_ most amazing thing happened at work today. You’ll just _die_.” 

“Can you talk about it over the phone?” Sharon asked. 

“Oh, sure.” Gail giggled. “You’re the one who does the top secret stuff. I just work in Archives. None of that’s secret. And if it was secret, I wouldn’t tell.” 

That was true. Gail was friendly and outgoing, but she was still a SHIELD employee. Sharon sat down on her bed. “Okay. So what is it?” 

“So you know how you said I should ask the senior agents for help with my project?” 

“I sure do.” As if she hadn’t nearly vomited with worry that that suggestion might have ended both of their careers. 

“Well, it was such a good idea!” Gail said. “I dropped a few hints, and I even e-mailed one of the senior brass to interview him – I was so nervous doing that, I nearly misspelled my own name!” 

Sharon shook her head. “Wait. How do you misspell a name like Gail?” 

“Fail!” Gail’s laughter bubbled over the phone, and Sharon had to laugh with her. “But seriously. I got some really great information. These, like, top senior people just started coming down to Archives, actually volunteering to talk to me. Who _does_ that?” 

Sharon suspected that the answer most likely involved old men with so many secrets that they hadn’t had an unguarded conversation in a decade. But what came out of her mouth was, “Well, you’re fun to talk to. Who wouldn’t want to come down for a chat?” 

“Aw, Sharon,” Gail said. “You’re sweet. You know who did come down?” 

And with a sudden, lightning-like flash of shock, Sharon did know. “Who?” she choked out. 

Gail gave a little squeak. “Captain America!” she cried. 

“Oh my God,” Sharon said. 

“I know, right?” Gail giggled. “I’m just sitting there at my desk, sorting through some of the files, and the bell at the desk rings, so I go out to see who it is, and it is actually, no-shit, Steven Rogers, Captain Freaking America, standing there.” 

Sharon’s head whirled. This was not at all how she had imagined her hint playing out. “Did he just come down on his own?” she asked. 

“He did. Just showed up at my desk, live and in person.” Gail paused, and something in her voice softened a bit. “He said he’d heard about my project when he was upstairs in a top level conference, because of course Captain America is in on the top level conferences. And he came down because he wanted to talk to someone who wouldn’t mind hearing about – what did he call them? – the people who were dead to everyone except him.” 

Sharon was glad that she was already sitting down on her bed. She glanced in the general direction of Captain Rogers’s apartment, even though she knew that there was no way he’d be able to hear her conversation. “Jesus,” she said. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

Gail sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I never knew that Captain America could look so much like . . . like a lost puppy, you know?” 

“What did you do?” Sharon asked. “Did you talk to him?” 

“Yeah. He was super helpful with some of the old SSR stuff. In the end, we just chatted, you know. He knew all these old stories. Whenever I took a file out, he’d tell me something about that person. Even people you think you know everything about, he knew something interesting that nobody knew.” 

A few puzzle pieces clicked into place in Sharon’s mind. “Anything really juicy?” 

Gail laughed a little. “Not to tell you over the phone. But I can tell you that he really perked up when I showed him Agent Carter’s file. He really studied that one. I bet they really were a thing back in the day.” 

Sharon flopped down onto her back, nearly shaking with relief. Captain Rogers had actually found out about Aunt Peggy without either Sharon or Gail having to tell him directly. Both of them now had absolutely rock-solid plausible deniability. Fury didn’t seem inclined to dig much deeper than he had already done, focusing instead on what to do with Captain Rogers now that he had found out about Aunt Peggy. Sharon and Gail were safe. “I wish I could have seen that,” Sharon choked out. 

“He was so sweet, too,” Gail said, too caught up in her own excitement to notice any stress in Sharon’s voice. “Really old-fashioned . . . well, I guess he would be, right? It’s just that when you see it in person – I hadn’t expected someone that famous to be so _nice_.” 

Sharon allowed herself to laugh. “Well, I met George Takei a few years ago, and he was nicer than I expected, too.” 

She and Gail chatted for a while longer, ending with a promise to get together for lunch before Christmas. After she had finished talking to Gail, Sharon put the phone on her nightstand, and sprawled over the bed. She let her thoughts drift for a while, and found herself unexpectedly returning to the idea that Gail had just seen, if not Captain Rogers being happy, at least a Captain Rogers who was interested in and focused on something. That was a sight that Sharon herself had never seen. She hoped that Fury would decide to let him go to visit Aunt Peggy. Maybe then she might get a chance to see his real personality emerge. 

 

 

Fury called two days later to inform Sharon that he had approved a supervised visit from Captain Rogers to Agent Carter. He would bring Captain Rogers to Sunset Glen personally, stay to supervise the visit, which would last no longer than twenty minutes, and then bring the Captain back home again. Sharon was to remain in her apartment from half an hour before Fury arrived until half an hour after he dropped Captain Rogers off following the visit. She was not permitted to make contact with him at all that day, but instead was ordered to tune in to the bugs in his apartment and report what she could discern of his mental state through the bugs. 

“I don’t want him to associate you in any way with Agent Carter,” Fury said. “Is that understood, Agent Thirteen?” 

“Yes, sir.” It was almost exactly what she had expected, and more than she had dared to hope for in the first place. 

“Any questions?”

Sharon thought for a moment. “Sir, has my aunt been given any sort of preparation for this visit?” 

“I dropped in at her residence this morning and spoke to her nurse. Nurse Clark assured me that Agent Carter would be able to deal with the meeting.” 

“No preparation, then.” 

“I didn’t see the need, Agent.” Fury’s voice softened just a little bit. “She won’t remember it anyway.” 

Sharon pressed her lips together before she spoke. “Sir, with respect, maybe there’s another way. Request permission to visit Agent Carter one day before Captain Rogers does.” 

Fury thought for a minute before he replied. “Granted. It won’t do any harm, at least. If you can get out there tomorrow, I’ll bring Captain Rogers the day after.” 

“Understood.” Sharon was already shifting around some errands on her calendar. “Thank you, sir.”

  

 

She drove out to Sunset Glen the next day. Eloise let her in, excited about the great reunion. Aunt Peggy sat in her usual chair by the window, knowing nothing about all the excitement. 

“What do you think the trees are saying to each other?” she asked, when Sharon brought the day’s cups of tea to the table. 

Sharon glanced at the bare branches swaying in the wind. “Maybe they’re talking about how much they miss having leaves,” she suggested. “Maybe they feel naked without them.” 

Aunt Peggy sipped her tea, and looked out at the trees again. Sharon reached out and picked up the framed photo of Captain Rogers. It was strange to see him as a short, skinny man with bony shoulders and an intense, fiery gleam in his eye. He didn’t look like the man who lived next door to her, but he didn’t _not_ look like him, either. The man in the photograph could have been his brother, perhaps. 

“That’s Steve,” Aunt Peggy told her. “Steve died in the War.” 

“What happened to him, Aunt Peggy?” 

Aunt Peggy sighed, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “He flew away,” she said. “He flew away, and he said goodbye, and he didn’t come back.” 

Sharon gazed intently at the photograph. “Did you go to his funeral?” 

Aunt Peggy thought for a while. “I don’t think there was a funeral,” she said at last. “The soldiers had drinks. Howard looked for Steve. He looked for a long time.” 

“Did Howard ever find Steve?” 

“No one found Steve,” Aunt Peggy said. “He flew away, and he never came back.” 

Sharon considered her next words carefully. “What if they did find him?” she asked. “What if they did find Steve? Would you want to see him?” 

“Oh, yes!” Aunt Peggy nodded. “I always want to see Steve. I loved him. I hope he’s in heaven so I can see him when I die.” 

She looked away and blinked back tears. Sharon put her arm around Aunt Peggy and pulled her into a gentle embrace. “Maybe you’ll see him again soon, Aunt Peggy,” she said. “You never know.” 

Aunt Peggy laid her head on Sharon’s shoulder. “No,” she said. “You don’t.” 

Sharon patted Aunt Peggy’s back and let her cry for a little while.

  

 

The next day, Sharon peeked discreetly through her curtains as Fury pulled up in front of the building in his armored SUV. He approached the front door, and Sharon lost sight of him. A few seconds later, she heard Captain Rogers leave his apartment and head down the stairs. Shortly after that, she watched as he left the building and followed Fury out to the SUV. 

As directed, she remained in her apartment, settling down with a cup of coffee and a Stephen King novel that would keep her mildly entertained without requiring too much attention. Sunset Glen was only about five miles away, and Fury was determined to limit the visit to twenty minutes. He and Captain Rogers would be back within an hour or so, even with traffic, and Sharon would have to remain alert to their arrival. 

The motor in Fury’s SUV had a distinctive purr, and as soon as Sharon heard it, she turned on the bugs in Captain Rogers’s apartment. When she looked out the window, she saw him get out of the car and enter the building, but she couldn’t quite see his face from that angle. He climbed the stairs with a deliberate tread, and Sharon put on her headphones to listen as he entered his apartment. 

She heard Captain Rogers take a few steps, and then a soft _whumph_ as he flung himself down on a soft piece of furniture. “Oh my God,” he groaned softly. “Oh my God, Peggy. Oh, Peggy. Oh my God.” 

The bugs were state-of-the-art audio technology, sensitive enough to pick up whispers. Sharon could hear the profound emotion running through Captain Rogers’s voice, and it took every bit of her SHIELD training not to fling off the headphones and run to his apartment to try to offer him the comfort of another human being near him. After a while, he became quiet, and a few minutes after that, Sharon heard one of his big-band records playing, and that was it for the bugs. Sharon took off the headphones. Sometimes, she wondered if Captain Rogers suspected that his apartment was bugged. 

She heard no weeping through her wall that night. When she slept, she dreamed that Aunt Peggy and Captain Rogers were dancing as she watched. Gail and, for some reason, Angie Martinelli flanked her on either side, holding her in a warm, sweet-smelling three-person embrace as they swayed to the same music.

  

 

Fury summoned her to his office the next morning. Sharon had been expecting the call, and she was halfway dressed for SHIELD already, her latest reports on Captain Rogers packed into her purse. She put on her jacket and shoes, fluffed her hair, and headed out to her car. When she arrived, one of the desk clerks greeted her and said that Fury was ready for her in his office. 

Sharon saluted him, and handed over the encrypted drive that held her reports. Fury exchanged it for a new drive, and invited her to sit down on one of the sofas instead of a chair in front of the desk. To her surprise, he sat down at the other end of the same sofa. He turned the drive she had given him over in his fingers for a while before he spoke. 

“I think I know what I’m going to find in these reports,” he said. 

“I really couldn’t say, sir.” 

Fury looked up sharply, though a mild humor gleamed in his eye. “You really are well trained, aren’t you?” he laughed. “That’s the exact phrase and tone of voice that junior officers always use to avoid saying ‘I told you so’ to their superiors.” 

“Well.” She felt herself blushing, and looked down at her lap to cover. 

“It’s all right, Agent. You’re being polite, but I deserve that. I was wrong.” 

Sharon glanced up. “Sir?” 

Fury nodded and gave a wry half-smile. “Yes, you heard right. I was wrong. There, I’ve said it again. You know, I didn’t lie to you. I did read all of your reports. But . . . I suppose I didn’t look too deeply into what you were telling me. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” 

“About how bad it was.” 

“Yeah.” Fury leaned back into the sofa and stared out the window for a moment. “You work with someone for a while, you sort of get used to them. And you maybe don’t realize how much they’ve died inside until they come to life again.” 

Sharon took a deep breath, and let it out, allowing several small muscles in her shoulders to relax. “I didn’t get a call from Eloise to say that Aunt Peggy had died of shock,” she offered. “I’m guessing it went okay.” 

“You could say that.” Fury turned toward her. “Want to hear about it?” 

“Yes, please!” Sharon spoke without even thinking about it. “That is, anything you’d like to share. Sir.” 

Fury smiled. “All right, Agent. You’ve earned this.”


	5. Deep In December

  1. **Deep In December**



  

 

“She’s really old,” Fury said, as he drove along Connecticut Avenue. “You understand that, right? She’s got Alzheimer’s, or some kind of old-age dementia. She’s senile.” 

“I know.” Rogers looked out the passenger-side window at the city slowly passing by. “You told me already.” 

“Just wanted to make sure you understand,” Fury said. “So you’re not shocked when you see her. She’s a frail old lady, and she might not recognize you or know who you are.” 

Rogers was silent for a moment, and a few small muscles by his ear twitched. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “She’s Peggy, and she’s alive. That’s all I need. Just to see her again.” 

“If that’s what you call living.” Fury glanced at a street sign, and changed lanes. Working with Rogers over the past year and a half had been an education in the vagaries of history. Once you got to know him, it turned out that there were many things about him that the history books had forgotten, conveniently elided, or outright lied about. But one thing that history had gotten absolutely right was that Rogers was probably the most stubborn cuss ever to walk the face of the earth. He was a man who went after what he wanted with single-minded determination, without considering the wisdom of his actions at all. Fury hoped that he wouldn’t be too disappointed when he saw Peggy Carter again. 

 

 

Fury signed them in at the reception desk, and Rogers followed him silently into the elevator and then out onto the fourth floor. He paused just after he got off the elevator, and looked around at the fourth-floor social area, taking in the bookshelves, recliners, the antique christening gown framed on the wall, and the few old men and women who were shuffling down the hall. The social area smelled of decay covered by disinfectant. Fury wondered what Rogers thought of this place, and the idea that Peggy Carter, whom he had last known as a young woman, lived in it. 

There was no sense it putting it off for longer than necessary. Fury allowed Rogers a few moments to get his bearings, and then urged him down the hall to Agent Carter’s apartment. Eloise the nurse let them in when he knocked, and Rogers greeted her politely. Fury moved to place his body between Rogers and the rest of the apartment, but Carter had heard them come in. 

“Is somebody there?” she called, in her gravelly old-lady voice. 

At the sound, Rogers seemed to come to life, vibrating with restrained energy. Eloise nodded to him, and hurried into the living room. 

“You have a visitor, Peggy,” she said. “This is a very special guest who can’t wait to see you.” She waved, and Rogers entered the living room, with Fury just behind him. 

Agent Carter was wearing her Sunday best dress, and a string of pearls. Her hair had been combed and fluffed and arranged so that it fell about her shoulders in perfect Veronica Lake waves of cloudy gray. Rogers took in the sight of her shriveled, wrinkled body, and her enormous, confused eyes as she stared back at a man who had existed for seventy years as a hazy figure of unreliable memory. For an eternal moment, neither of them spoke or moved. 

“Steve,” Carter said, and her face crumpled with impending tears. “Steve . . . you came back? Are you going to take me to heaven?” 

“I’m here, Peggy,” Rogers said. He crossed the room in two long strides and sank to his knees at her feet. “I’m right here. I’ve missed you.” 

His voice cracked, and he picked up one of her delicate hands and held it gently in his own. Carter ran her other hand over his hair. “You’re really here,” she said. “Now I can be happy.” 

Rogers leaned over and laid his head in Carter’s lap, and Carter ran her hands through his hair and down his shoulders, as if trying to convince herself that she really could touch the man she had lost decades earlier. 

Eloise smiled, and beckoned Fury into the kitchen. “Let’s give them their visit,” she said. “Shall I make tea?”

Fury shook himself out of his bewilderment of seeing Rogers and Carter behaving so unlike themselves. “Uh . . . is there any coffee? I don’t think tea is going to cut it.” 

Eloise laughed and took a jar and a French press down from a high shelf. “Peggy doesn’t drink coffee, but I do,” she said. She filled the kettle and switched it on, and spooned coffee into the French press. “That was a good deed that you did, Mr. Fury. For both of them.” 

Fury shrugged. “We’ll see. I hope it was the right choice. It’s not always obvious.” 

“No,” Eloise said. “But this time . . . you should have seen her while I was getting her ready. Excited like a schoolgirl on her first date. She loves getting pretty, because she knows that good things happen when she gets pretty.” 

“Hmm.” The kettle clicked off, and Fury watched as Eloise poured water into the French press. His mind supplied the fresh memory of Rogers answering his door, scrubbed and shaved and polished and pressed within an inch of his life. “Fifteen minutes after we’re gone, she’s going to forget this ever happened.” 

Eloise took two mugs out of the cupboard. “She will. But she’s happy now.” She eyed the French press, pressed the plunger, and poured the coffee. “And he’s happy. And he won’t forget.” 

“I hope this doesn’t ruin him.” Fury took a sip of his coffee, which was surprisingly good. “You know who he is, right?” 

Eloise laughed. “Six-foot-tall blond white boy with muscles all the way to Florida, who walks and talks like an Audie Murphy movie? Not too many possibilities there.” 

“Yeah, point taken.” A corner of Fury’s mouth twisted into a smile. “There’s a lot about him that’s not what you think it’s going to be.” 

“He’s going to be fine,” Eloise said. “You watch. It’s like all the parents who don’t want to bring the little ones to grandma’s funeral. They think it’ll scare them. But the children always know how to handle it. Only the parents get nervous.” 

Eloise winked at Fury. He thought of several replies, but instead opted to drink his coffee and be thankful that Eloise didn’t report to him. After twenty minutes, he set down his cup and walked back into the living room. Rogers and Carter hadn’t moved since he had left them. Rogers still knelt on the floor with his head in Carter’s lap, and she was still petting his hair and stroking his shoulders as they conversed quietly. He sat up on his heels when he heard Fury enter. 

“Sir?” he asked. 

“That’s all for today, Captain,” Fury said. “You can see her again,” he added, on the theory that it was better to give that permission now than to have to deal with Rogers inevitably returning to Sunset Glen on his own. “We can get you registered as a visitor.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Rogers rose gracefully to his feet. 

“Are you going away?” Carter asked. 

Rogers nodded. “Yeah, Peggy. But I’ll come back. I promise. I will come back to see you.” 

“Goodbye, my darling.” Carter turned to Fury, looking far more composed than most old women who had just spent twenty minutes conversing with a ghost might be expected to look. “You brought me Steve,” she said. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome.” Fury chivvied Rogers out the door. 

Rogers didn’t have much to say for himself during the ride back to his apartment. But when Fury glanced over at him in the passenger seat, he noticed that, although his eyes were unusually liquid, there was color in Rogers’s face that hadn’t been there for many weeks.

  

 

“So that’s how it happened,” Fury said. He sat back in his chair and looked expectantly at Sharon, almost as if he were waiting for her to give a sign of approval, or laugh in his face, or do some other thing that would be completely inappropriate coming from a junior officer. Sharon didn’t bite. 

“That sounds like it went well,” she said. “It sounds like it was good for both of them. I can give Eloise a call later just to make sure.” 

“It worked out,” Fury said, though Sharon thought there was just a tinge of disappointment in his voice. Then he sat up straight and was all business again. “Just so that we’re clear on this, Agent, your assignment is not finished. You’re still working protection on Captain Rogers until I tell you otherwise.”

“Understood. Sir, you said you were going to get him registered as a visitor at Sunset Glen.” 

Fury nodded. “As we have previously established, Captain Rogers isn’t stupid. He’d go there anyway, now that he knows. Might as well make it official. He can get there on his bike.” 

“Would you like me to take –“ 

“No.” Fury’s eye blazed intently. “Those orders still stand. Captain Rogers is not to know that you’re connected either to SHIELD or to Agent Carter. We’ll have to work out some way to schedule visits so that neither of you visits her on the same day. I’ll put the fear of God into the staff. And, as ghoulish as it may be, we’ll just have to rely on Agent Carter’s memory lapses for complete discretion.” 

For a moment, Sharon imagined a scenario of Captain Rogers entering Sunset Glen by the front door as she slipped out through the back. It seemed almost like a setup for wacky hijinks in an 80s screwball comedy, except that it wasn’t particularly funny. “May I keep my Sunday afternoons, sir?” she asked. “I’ve been doing that since before this assignment, and it’s part of her weekly routine. Church, and then me. I think she’d notice if I stopped that.” 

“I understand.” Fury gave a tight little smile. “Yes, you can keep that. I’m going to see about limiting Captain Rogers to one or two days a week at first, and see how that goes. I’ll let you know when we’ve worked that out, and you can schedule other visits around that.” 

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” 

“All right. Stay sharp. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you need to worry about.” Fury rose to his feet, and Sharon followed suit. “That’s all for today, Agent.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Sharon gave a crisp salute, turned around, and walked to the door. Just as her hand touched the handle, Fury cleared his throat. 

“One more thing, Agent.” 

Sharon turned around. “Sir?” 

Fury fixed a particularly intense one-eyed gaze on her. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, then you should know two things. First of all, and you are not to repeat this to anyone, you have every right to be thinking it. Second,” and his gaze softened just a bit, “the proper form – in case you were wondering – is ‘what an enormous idiot you were, _sir_.’ Got that?” 

Sharon smiled. “Loud and clear, sir. Merry Christmas.” 

“And to you, Agent. Dismissed.”

  

 

When Sharon left SHIELD, a blast of crisp, cold air hit her face, and she breathed deeply. She had managed to do something good for both Aunt Peggy and Captain Rogers, avoid getting in trouble for it, and get an almost-apology from Director Fury, and it was almost Christmas. She decided that she deserved a little treat, and drove a bit out of her way to a farmers’ market that had a stall selling seasonal greenery. Most of the full-sized Christmas trees that were left this late in December were scraggly and pathetic, but Sharon found a small tree, almost more of a bush, that was just the right size to put on her credenza. It was lush and pretty, and cheap enough that she decided to buy a pine wreath for her front door as well. 

The fresh pine scent that infused her car as she drove home gave her an idea. She set up the tree on the credenza and left it to accustom itself to its new home. Then she called Gail and invited her to come for a girls’ evening out after work. 

They started at the Downtown Holiday Market just after sunset, roaming among the stalls, admiring pretty handicrafts and drinking hot chocolate and mulled wine. Sharon bought a box of ornaments for her little tree, and Gail helped her pick them out, insisting that she should have a little figure of Captain America to go at the very top. Gail bought an apple-pie scented candle, which she immediately gave to Sharon, and Sharon bought a set of pretty combs for Gail to wear in her Kate Middleton hair. They went in together on bags of warm candied nuts and ate them as they walked over to the Ellipse. 

The National Christmas Tree shone, covered in a delicate web of lights set with individual, larger stars. All around it, the smaller state trees twinkled. Sharon and Gail walked among the trees together, and Sharon admired the way Gail’s face glowed in their light. Parents chased small children, and a few couples strolled along, hand in hand. Sharon wondered what it would be like to be one of those couples, walking around the Christmas trees with her arm around Gail, maybe even being so bold as to kiss her and taste the flavors of chocolate, wine, and spices on her breath. 

That thought got her heart racing and made her shiver. Several times, she almost plucked up her courage to try it, but in the end, the moment was so perfect that she dared not risk spoiling it with a potential rejection. Instead, she used the crowds as an excuse to stay close at Gail’s side and occasionally hold on to her arm for a while. There would be other opportunities, she told herself. Neither one of them was about to be fired, court-martialed, or otherwise removed from their everyday life. She had time to explore this new . . . well, _crush_ , as seventh-grade as that sounded, and figure out how that fit with her understanding of herself, as well as to find out discreetly whether Gail might be receptive. 

“This is so pretty,” Gail said. “I keep meaning to come down here one of these years, and I’ve never really gone and done it.” 

“Really?” Sharon asked. “How come?” 

Gail shrugged. “I guess it just seemed stupid to go all by myself. I’m glad you’re here with me. Thanks for inviting me.” 

Sharon smiled. “Thanks for coming.” 

Gail looked down at her empty hot chocolate cup. “It’s getting a bit chilly,” she said. “How about we go and check out the Reflecting Pool and maybe one of the war memorials, get our blood moving, and then call it a night?” 

“Sounds like a plan.” Sharon pretended to huddle up against Gail for warmth. Gail laughed, and led them down 17th Street. The Washington Monument and the Capitol were lit up, and the Reflecting Pool showed both of them in a shimmery haze. Gail insisted on walking near the World War II memorial and the statue of Captain America that stood just outside of it. 

“Look at that,” she said. “I actually met him, and he turned out to be a pretty nice guy.” 

“Well, you made him happy,” Sharon pointed out. 

“You gave me the idea,” Gail replied. Then she laughed, and plunged her hand into one of Sharon’s shopping bags. She pulled out the little Captain America Christmas tree topper and waved it at the statue. “Merry Christmas, Captain America!” she called, and Sharon couldn’t help giggling at how ridiculously cheesy and utterly sincere the moment was. Gail smiled, and put the ornament back in Sharon’s bag. “I wonder what Captain America does for Christmas,” she said, clearly not expecting an answer. 

Based on her memories of what her sophomore roommate Amy Bromberg had told her, Sharon suspected that Chinese food might be involved, but she didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t be around to confirm it either way, as she had decided to spend Christmas at Sunset Glen with Eloise and Aunt Peggy. But just in case, she decided that she would place takeout menus in the building’s mailroom, as if from an enterprising restaurant. 

“Oh, hey!” Gail said. “Christmas selfie with Captain America!” She pulled Sharon close to her, turned them around with their backs to the statue, and pulled out her phone. Sharon had to nestle in close and put her head on Gail’s shoulder so that she could be in in the picture, and she felt her smile spreading all through her body as Gail pressed the shutter button. 

 

 

After she got home that evening, Sharon hung her new ornaments on her little Christmas tree, choosing at the last minute to put Captain America on one of the lower branches and put a more conventional star on top in his place. She made a bowl of popcorn, thinking that a popcorn string would be pretty on the tree. But, faced with the prospect of actually finding a needle and thread and stringing the popcorn kernels together, Sharon decided that the tree was decorated enough, and ate the popcorn with a glass of wine. She took the bowl to the kitchen, and saw one last shopping bag forgotten on the counter. It contained the pine wreath she’d bought at the market along with the tree. 

It didn’t seem to have suffered from sitting on the counter for a few hours, and the ribbon and pinecones were perky. It even had a little hanging loop on the back made of silky cord. She rooted around in her junk drawer until she found a command hook and a sticky strip. She gathered up her keys, hook, sticky strip and the wreath in its bag, and took them all out into the hall. 

Sharon eyeballed the position for the command hook, and stuck it on the door just over the number. Just as she had it placed and was taking the wreath out of the bag, Captain Rogers came out of his apartment. 

“Heard noises,” he said. “Came to check it out.” 

Sharon flashed a smile at him. “Just a little holiday cheer.” 

To her surprise, he not only made eye contact and returned the smile, but actually stayed outside his apartment to watch. Sharon pulled the wreath free of the bag and hung it on the hook. She had judged the placement of the hook correctly, and the wreath sat in the middle of the door, circling the peephole but not obscuring it. “There,” she said. “It’s hiding the number, but I don’t think that’s so important. There’s only us on this floor anyway.” 

Captain Rogers nodded. “I think I can remember which apartment is mine,” he said. “It’s the one without the wreath.” 

“Very clever,” Sharon said. 

Captain Rogers looked at the wreath for a few moments. “It’s pretty,” he offered. “And it smells nice. I didn’t expect it to be real branches.”

Sharon smiled. “It’s Christmas. I felt like I should splurge a bit.” 

“You deserve it.” Captain Rogers ducked his head shyly for a moment. “I know how hard nurses work.” 

She had seen his personnel file, and she knew exactly how he knew that. She squashed the tendril of guilt that tried to blossom in her chest, and broadened her smile. “Thank you.” 

Captain Rogers raised his head, and Sharon saw a bit of pink in his cheeks, the first color she’d seen in his face in weeks. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been living here for a while, and I’ve seen you around the building, but I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced. I’m Steve Rogers.” He held out his hand. 

Sharon took it. It was warm and dry, and his grip was just firm enough. “Kate,” she said. “Kate Hathaway.” She’d borrowed the name from her best childhood friend and from her favorite character on _ER_ , but she thought he wouldn’t notice. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Kate,” Captain Rogers said. “If you ever need anything – an extra hand, or five inches of height, or anything like that – let me know, okay?” 

“Thanks. I will.” 

His blush deepened, and as much as she hated to end their first real conversation, she decided to take pity on him. “I’ve got a few more things to put up.” 

He couldn’t quite hide a look of relief. “Well, then I won’t keep you. You’re obviously on a roll here.” He paused, as if searching for unfamiliar words. “Merry Christmas, Kate.” And he slipped back inside his apartment before Sharon had to figure out how to reply. 

She checked to make sure the wreath was hanging securely, and then went back into her own apartment and pumped her fist silently in triumph. Then she took the apple-pie scented candle that Gail had given her into the bathroom, and drew a well-deserved warm bubble bath for herself.

 

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to all who have read and enjoyed this story! I’m especially glad that Sharon came off as well as she did. I hadn’t originally intended for this to be a story from Sharon’s perspective, but she just sort of . . . established herself, and it just seemed right. I enjoyed having a chance to explore a character who I thought had a lot of potential, but who was certainly not used to best advantage in the movies.


End file.
